I’ve spun more than a few wheels hearing that repeated since I started making games back in 2005. I don’t know why these thoughts just dawned on me this morning, but I don’t have fun playing your game. In most cases your game becomes pretty tedious, especially after I figure out the core of your system. Tedious is not exactly a word used for fun, so what keeps me coming back?

Completing a game, or even playing a game for multiple weeks, is a rare event for me. I could easily feel a sense of euphoria coming into a game for an hour or two and proceed to drop it like a bad habit a day later. On the other hand, I could jump into a game and play it for weeks, even if it’s monotonous. What’s going on?

How do you identify fun? It’s easier to spot kids having fun, but for an adult whose minds are so occupied by problems is much harder. However, watch what happens when you put a group of adults together with a game and see how easy it is to spot. All of a sudden they’re not in their own head any longer, they’re focused on the people around them, laughing and feeling a sense of excitement. A great example of this is when I saw Johann Sebastian Joust at the Game Developers Conference. You could absolutely spot people having fun together and coming back to play. When your designing an isolated experience you don’t have the luxury of seeing that so why would we focus on it?

I’m starting to realize that fun is the wrong way to look at game design. Instead, think about engagement. The games that I completed, or played for an extended period of time (weeks), might have been fun initially, but what kept me playing was the engagement. Two different things in motion here. I can be engaged and not having fun. Vice versa. I can be very engaged running around EverQuest 2 collecting harvesting materials, but I’m not having fun doing it. I can be very engaged attempting to cross a level in Super Meat Boy, but there is no way I would say that was fun. In fact, I’m sure that game resulted in a lot of broken screens. I’ve gone into plenty of games excited and feeling like the game is really fun, only to find myself lacking any sort of engagement. Fez is a disappointing recent example for me. I had that sense of euphoria for the first few hours, but when it was gone so was the game – I didn’t feel engaged.

How do you sell engagement? You don’t. You sell the perception of fun and you keep your players coming back with engagement. Engagement is for the individual player to discover, but in order to capture the player’s hearts and minds you should make it look extremely fun. Give that person a sense of euphoria coming in. Beautiful graphics and interesting looking mechanics that they feel compelled to dive in and explore. Get them to open your game and play again by engaging them.

Here are a few things that I’m going to keep on my mind during the development of my next game.

I’ll use examples from 2 games that really engaged me, far more than anything else on mobile recently. To be clear, I’m aware of Ninja Fishing’s story but still wanted to study it.

1. Cycles of Tension and Release
With games that keep me coming I could clearly feel tension toward a goal and the release of succeeding or failing. I could clearly see the goal. I could measure the progress, like reaching a particular enemy, that built tension. The release of that tension either tells me I succeeded or failed. Think about Temple Run. As you speed up faster and faster it’s hard not to feel tense. You’re going so fast that you forget to breath, you eventually lose and start to breathe again.

What about games that are not as active? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

2. Observable Progress Toward a Goal
While you have a goal it’s difficult to expect a player to become engaged if they have no idea how close they are too it. Ninja Fishing gives you a clear goal (catch fish) that is easily measurable (with x amount of line displayed on screen). Tie this in with #1 and now you have a cycle of tension (trying to use all of your line) and release (hitting the bottom, hitting a bomb, or catching the max).

3. Reinforcement
I have a hard time being engaged if I don’t earn a reward. Starcraft 2 / Diablo 3 constantly unlocked new things to put my mind on. Temple Run and Ninja Fishing unlocked new items that engaged me much more. The key here is to make these items valuable to the player that engages them to play. Don’t just give me a piece of food – give me a new arm that I can put on my robot so I can see what new things he does!

4. Emergent Gameplay
What is Emergent Gameplay? Wikipedia: “Complex situations in video games, board games, or table top role-playing games that emerge from the interaction of relatively simple game mechanics.” Think about Simcity. You’re laying the foundation that the entire system takes control of and surprises you with. You continue to influence the system as time advances. Look at the upcoming 360 game Spelunky. They’ve built a world where objects interact with each other surprisingly well. A good example is when you’re carrying sticky bombs and a monkey jumps on your back. The monkey attempts to steal one, it sticks to the monkey, and you both blows you up. If you had a normal bomb, the monkey would have jumped off your back and thrown it at you (I think, I haven’t played it).

5. Involve a Friend
You hope that by following the above that you create an atmosphere that is so engaging that they want to validate and share their experience. The player shows off a score so they can get a high 5 or so they can brag. When people can feel like they achieved something great they’ll seek positive reinforcement. You have very little reason to force sharing on someone. If your game is engaging enough it will happen automatically (See: Temple Run). Sure, make it easy for the player to share, but I don’t see a reason to jam it down their throat.

I’m sure you have some other ways to engage a player. Feel fee to share your thoughts.

If you give your game to someone and they can’t voluntarily put it down, then you’re on the right track. If you start playing your own game and can’t put it down, you guessed it. Stay humble and keep creating!

The post I’m Not Having Fun Playing Your Game appeared first on  Digital Dave.

Let’s improve ourselves by thinking about how you can improve your productivity. These may sound like a no-brainer but you should always strive to keep these things on your mind. Let’s look at 3 things that are pretty important in my world.

#1 has to be about Conquering Procrastination

Now, more than ever, you need to stay focused and disciplined. With Facebook, Twitter, great games that are cheaper than ever (FREE), an internet filled with interesting information, and plenty of other things like having a family, focus on developing good habits. Pay attention to what you’re doing. Catch yourself in the act and divert your attention as soon as possible. If you are set on finishing a task today, finish it – non-negotiable!

Remember this. Once you fall into the trap of giving up once it will make it much easier to give up the next time. You know what needs to be done so stick to it.

#2 is about being healthy and reducing stress

Take care of yourself.

You don’t have to be an extremely active athlete. Run. Walk. Ride a bike. These are quick ways to get you out and doing something. Unless you live extremely close to a gym, keeping a gym routine can be extremely hard. Keep it simple for now.

Focusing on what you’re eating is the most import aspect of being healthy. I’m not giving up some of the processed food that I eat, but the key here is that you will not find me eating it 3 times a day and I never eat to the point where I’m full. 3 Things. Avoid processed food. Eat fruit (watermelon!). Move to whole wheat food.

Remember this. Being healthy is a lifestyle.

#3 is about surrounding yourself with positive people

I absolutely love talking to positive and motivated people. Seeing what motivated people are doing fuels me in a completely unique way. The excitement I feel for them translates into whatever I’m working on.

On the flip side. If the people I’m around are negative it makes it extremely difficult to work. When was the last time you got an idea from a negative person? Your mind is in the wrong place when negativity is around. Negativity is a double edged sword — not only will this stress you out, it’ll kill your productivity.

Remember this. We are imitators. You yawn? I’ll yawn. You create a rockstar product? I’ll create a rockstar product. You’re depressed? I’ll be depressed.

What is your #1 tip for productivity? I’d be interested in hearing it so leave a brief comment!

The post Improve Your Productivity By Thinking About 3 Simple Things appeared first on  Digital Dave.

“wtf… those two games don’t even go together”

“people are going to …”

It was fun while it lasted, but alas, yesterday was simply a joke. For those who didn’t catch it right away (or at all), there will be no void landing in Colorflys. Colorflys is a beautiful world designed by Tanna Tucker and the last thing I want to do is mess it up with programmer art.

The post No Mashing of Colorflys and Project Void appeared first on  Digital Dave.

Many of you may not be aware of my unsuccessful hit title, Project Void, a game where I pit you against a randomly generated void which must be filled with the use of shapes that oddly resemble those you would find in Tetris (cloned proudly).

Anyway, Return of The Void! I’ve been itching to release a content update for Colorflys and I can announce that it is right around the corner. ROTV will include unfamiliar elements that will challenge you to make even quicker, and more challenging decisions when capturing butterflies. Void shapes have landed and they’re here to protect the butterflies from being captured!

I recently went to the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco and learned a ton of amazing new things I wanted to incorporate into this update.

One of the biggest updates is an assortment of new in app purchases!

- The “difficulty ramp” is too burdening? Buy the fancy new “Invert the Void” machine to remove a random shape! If you’d like to choose the shape, purchase the “Invert The Void Directly” machine.

- Rather not capture any butterflies with your finger? Buy a sack of “Nets” to automagically capture the butterflies you need!

- Don’t like the strike system? No problem. $1 gets rid of this burden.

- Who wants to deal with playing the game at all? For $10 you can buy “Ransack Collector Bob” who will play the game for you, unlock all achievements and even award you a fancy medal for completing the game! You can even color the medal by unlocking the Color Wheel in the store!

I’ve conveniently placed a direct way for you to find these awesome new IAPs by placing a button on the lower-left corner of every screen.

I really hope you like the coming update! Stay tuned for more updates and please share the news to your kids, mom, grandma, social media friends and even your gardener (who I’m sure loves butterflies!).

The post Announcing Colorflys: Return of The Void appeared first on  Digital Dave.

What a blast. I’ve digitized my notes here.

I’ve heard a lot of bad things about attending sponsored sessions, but I decided to crack and go to one — the Simcity 5 talk on the Glass Box engine they’re building for their future simulations. Check out these videos of demos they showed in the session. I really love simulation games and am currently trying to find an idea to run with in iOS land. It was great seeing this behind the scene look and the way they’re tackling things these days (rule-scripts vs. random numbers).

Another fun session was by Kert Kartner who spoke about building trailers for games. He has a background in Visual Effects and has made some really awesome trailers. I’m fairly happy with the Colorflys trailer, but I picked up on a few new things to think about for my next trailer. One of them was on creating a story with your trailer. Introduce and set the scene, build toward a climax and then let it rip! Finally, end things and leave the person wanting more!

Best quote of the GDC? Failure is the tuition for success.

The lead designer from Space Invaders: Infinity Gene and Groove Coaster also gave a good design session which outlined 5 things he feels are important to design. Check out page 3 of my notes for those 5 principles.

Luke Muscat from Jetpack Joyride fame gave a great session on the making of. An interesting bit from this was that they shipped the game with @1x graphics (where they could) and had a script that converted those graphics to @2x when a player started the game with a retina device. Clever.

I really liked one of the last sessions of the conference by Matt Rix (Trainyard) and Semyon Voinov (Cut the Rope) on Level Design. Matt looks at level design as teaching and feels each level needs a purpose; evoking an idea and/or teaching something. Semyon has 3 goals; make the players smart, appeal to casual/hardcore players and keep players hungry. The principles he outlines were pretty good.

Overall it was a great GDC. This year I decided to kicked off the days with a 2.6mi run with a group of fine folks! That was a blast. I didn’t hit up a lot of events and instead hustled while I was at the conference. I’d love to see more game jam type gatherings in the evenings.

Thanks to the GDC ninjas who awarded me with an All Access pass for this.

The post On GDC 2012 appeared first on  Digital Dave.

So it appears that I will be heading to GDC. I’m stoked! Get in touch if you’ll be out there!

The post Road Trip! GDC ’12 appeared first on  Digital Dave.

Done, sir, done! I recently pushed YieldKeeper to Apple.

My hope is that this journal will help investors on OS X who are just starting (students, amateurs) and experienced traders who are looking for a better way to keep an eye on their activity. There is nothing like this on the app store right now.

I’ve been a long term trader for the majority of the last 9 years. I’ve also been very active and traded on a daily basis. This is built by someone who was wanting something far friendlier than existing options (spreadsheets, trading logs, broker reports). You don’t have to set this up. I’ve been using this over the last few months every day I trade. I’d fire YieldKeeper up in the morning and as I entered and completed positions I tossed them into YieldKeeper with notes and screenshots. At the end of the day I went through and rated trades that I felt offered a good learning experience. If I was trading long term, I would simply slow that process down.

Trade to trade well, not to make money. Trading well requires a diligent investor who studies a continually changing market and learns from their trading activity, which is why simulating/paper trading is stressed on new and even experienced trader. Personally, I have something I call a Penalty Box. If I make 3 bad trades in a row, I’m out. I’m simulating for a day or two and that is non-negotiable. Something is wrong and I want to figure out what it is.

So here we are! I’ll announce a release date soon.

The post YieldKeeper Heading To Mac App Store appeared first on  Digital Dave.

Yes, I was working on a game but I was having a brutal time designing it. The complexity started to enter a not-so-fun zone and I refuse to release something that doesn’t raise the bar above Colorflys and meet my goals for depth/fun. I’ll get back to it, or a different game design, after the following project.

I’ve been interested in finance for quite some time. It started when I came back from deployment in Iraq in 2003 and instead of spending the savings haphazardly, like many ended up doing, I jumped on board with Morgan Stanley and had a financial advisor manage it since I was new to finance and I had very little time to devote to learning it. When I left the corps in 2004 I took the money out and began managing it myself through Scottrade.

I’ve always had a problem plaguing my trading — a solid way to track how I was doing. These days my primary goal is not to make money- it’s to trade well. Study, make solid decisions about why you enter a position, set a reasonable risk/reward scenario and then execute the plan. After the plan is executed figure out what went right and what didn’t. Study more. Reduce mistakes. Visually see how you’re performing. Become a better trader. If you solely focus on making $X/day you will be in a huge bucket of pain in a market that is currently accepting plenty of prisoners.

So that brings me to YieldKeeper. Many folks, myself included, keep track of things through reports via a broker and/or an excel spreadsheet. Neither method is conducive in doing the things that I wanted. You can do some fancy things in excel but it’s going to take a lot of time to refine a solid experience and even then it’s not really good enough – I’ve done it several times and have never been happy. I wanted something that I can wedge into my process with minimal impact while allowing me to keep track of each position I go in/out of, track how I’m doing overall and give me the ability to study from my prior trades.

So in the next few weeks I’ll start introducing you to YieldKeeper. Right now I’m more concerned with tailoring a great experience than releasing it so I have no ETA on a release. Sign up for my newsletter and I’ll let you know when it’s ready. Toss me an email if you’re a trader and would like to provide some user testing. Finally, yieldkeeper.com is live.

Q. Will this be coming to iOS?
A. I’m primarily developing this with a specific flow in mind. I remain open-minded about iOS but that isn’t the current goal.

Q. [yours here] – Feel free to contact me with any questions or things you’d like to see

The post Why yes, I have been bitten by a little ADD appeared first on  Digital Dave.

After a few weeks of piecing together designs and prototypes I’ve isolated in on the next idea that will release under the iGotIt Games hood. It can be difficult to balance an idea with what is possible realistically. I can’t start a project without having a clear goal in mind and a basic idea fleshed out within several pages. I was working on a design/prototype called Monkey Vine that I was really excited about, but the more the design evolved, the more I realize it was going to be difficult to do financially – so I had to put it on the back burner. I can only invest so much into these projects, and every decision matters a mega-ton, so I need to find a design that doesn’t require so much outside work and is smart. You are measured by the decisions you make so try and make them with the best judgement that you can given your experience. Try not to beat yourself over with a hammer and make sure you’re applying what you’ve learned from your past endeavors.

A blog post I read recently enforced the idea of not chasing current trends. Well, Monkey Vine was chasing a current trend (distance games). If you can’t do something that is meaningfully different than a current trend it doesn’t make sense to follow it. It’s unlikely that you’ll ever be better or even at the same level. Monkey Vine was going to be an expensive project and I didn’t feel like it was going to offer significantly more than what was currently out there.

So, insert, -the new project name-. Back when I was in grade school I created this game with a friend on paper and played it with him all of the time. Well, during a recent run I began thinking about that paper-based game. Since we made that around 20 years ago there have been games that echo similarities, but nothing that is the same. The game will utilize the iOS 5′s turn-based multiplayer API, along with a pixelated art direction. I have adapted the game design to a couple of games that I admire (Angry Birds, Battleship) and also games that echo a simliar goal (Advance Wars). I developed a basic prototype that revolved around the core gameplay mechanic and had a few folks playtest it locally. The general consensus was that they saw potential and were excited about the future possibilities so here we go.

Today iGotIt Games signed Will Olthouse who provided an awesome pixel art concept for the game. I’m really excited to see how this game turns out with his style.

I really hope to be far more open about development of this game so feel free to follow along and throw a grenade my way if I slack off.

The post Moving and Shaking – The Next Game appeared first on  Digital Dave.

I’ve finally isolated a new idea worth pursuing. Megan approached me a few weeks ago with a idea revolving around a big theme on the app store right now – how far can you go? I liked the theme a lot but had a hard time pulling out interesting gameplay mechanics. I do not want to just simply create a Doodle Jump or Canabalt. I also do not want to create a shallow game. I’ve learned quite a bit through my last three projects that have given me insight that I can pull from. I feel like I have a fun design that should finally introduce some depth which I’ve neglected to implement far too much in the past. We’ll see once that early playtest session hits.

For far too long I’ve neglected ‘What makes this game good, even great?’ Normally when I play video games I don’t sit and analyze them as I play. I play them for what they are and I either enjoy the experience or I become bored and quit. I don’t moan, cry or berate the developers. I don’t sit and say, “I love this because I’m doing x, y and z!” If I become bored and quit I rarely ever touch it again. If I really enjoy the experience I might play a few more sessions over a week or two and then drop it. It is a rare case that I play a game for any serious amount of time – only a couple of MMOs (not these days, sadly) and Starcraft 2 fall into that category.

Needless to say, in the past few months I have been paying more attention to the games I’ve played.

Most recent example, Velocispider. I played this over and over because it feels smooth, the weapons are really cool, the creatures various are interesting, the graphics are easy on the eyes and I am a pretty competitive person. This game lasted a week! I don’t play it much any longer mainly because I hit a high score wall where I found it too tough to get past (after 4-5 plays of failing at the same high score spot).

The other day I came across an article, What Makes Games Good, which is an outstanding read.

The post Designing The Next Project appeared first on  Digital Dave.